Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Sir Keir Starmer is facing questions over his suspension of seven Labour MPs, a move that signalled the new prime minister will take a robust approach to party discipline but risks storing up dissent.
Labour suspended seven leftwing MPs, including former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, for six months after they rebelled and backed a Scottish National party amendment to the King’s Speech calling for the two-child benefit cap to be lifted.
Starmer will face his first set of Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, where he is expected to be asked about the decision.
A senior party official said the suspensions were a “vital demonstration” that the party would govern as it campaigned in the election and would not lose sight of its promise to act with discipline around public spending.
The cap stops most parents claiming additional child-related welfare payments if they have more than two children. Removing it would cost £3.4bn each year but lift roughly 500,000 children out of poverty, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank.
Although party whips had warned MPs that they would lose the whip if they backed the SNP amendment, the decision to make them sit as independents is unprecedented.
On Monday Starmer raised the prospect of lifting the benefit cap after Bridget Phillipson, education secretary, stated ministers would consider scrapping it “as one of a number of levers” in Labour’s strategy to reduce child poverty.
He added: “We will make sure that the strategy covers all the bases to drive down child poverty. No child should grow up in poverty.”
Philip Cowley, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said the decision to suspend a handful of MPs sent a clear signal over rebellion and party discipline. He said no new Labour MPs had backed the amendment, but cautioned that removing the whip had limited traction.
“It might work as a short-term hit but in the long term it builds up problems,” Cowley added. “You can’t govern like this at all times.”
Starmer suffered a major rebellion in November over his party’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war, with 10 Labour frontbenchers quitting and 46 other MPs defying him to back a parliamentary motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Labour leader did not suspend MPs following the vote.
About 42 Labour MPs did not vote on Tuesday, including several front bench figures who were absent from parliament on government business, with several understood to have abstained. The SNP amendment was rejected by 363 votes to 103.
Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said she could not attend the vote for personal reasons but was “horrified” that colleagues had been suspended.
The two-child benefit cap affected 1.6mn children in the year to April 2024, up from 1.5mn in the previous 12 months, according to data from the Department for Work and Pensions.
The measure was introduced by the previous Conservative government in April 2017, and has long been opposed by many Labour MPs — deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has called the policy “obscene”.